Geomagnetic Storms:Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm

Updated at: 2008 Mar 10 2203 UTC

Mid-latitudes

0-24 hr

24-48 hr

ACTIVE

30 %

30 %

MINOR

15 %

15 %

SEVERE

05 %

05 %

High latitudes

0-24 hr

24-48 hr

ACTIVE

30 %

40 %

MINOR

20 %

10 %

SEVERE

10 %

10 %

What's up in Space

March 10, 2008

Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that star? Get the answers from mySKY--a fun new astronomy helper from Meade.

ASTEROID FLYBYS: Asteroid 2008 ED8 (50m wide) is flying past Earth today, March 10th, only ~300,000 miles away. Its orbit is curiously similar to that of another asteroid, 2008 EZ7 (18m wide), which flew past Earth on Sunday, March 9th. Are the two newly-discovered space rocks related? No one knows. Tonight, amateur astronomers may be able to photograph 2008 ED8 gliding through Virgo glowing about as brightly as a 12th magnitude star: ephemeris.

AURORA WATCH: A solar wind stream hit Earth on March 8th sparking bright auroras across Canada and Alaska. "It was a wild night in Edmonton," says Zoltan Kenwell who took this photo just outside the city limits:

FOUNTAIN OF FURY: "Yesterday I saw an exciting prominence on the sun through my Coronado SolarMax90," reports Larry Alvarez of Flower Mound, Texas. "It looked like a red fountain of fury and I really enjoyed it until the clouds rolled in." Click on the image to play a 1.5 hour movie:

Prominences are clouds of hydrogen held above the surface of the sun by magnetic fields. This one really does appear to be a sort of fountain. Magnetic forces are lifting material up, up, up, tens of thousands of miles high where it falls down again for recycling. Is the "fountain of fury" still spewing today? Readers with solar telescopes, take a look!

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time. [comment]